


Death of the Mechanisms

by NammiKisulora



Series: Beginnings and Endings [2]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Death to the Mechanisms Spoilers, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Suicide, That's it, but I might be using a bit of creative license with details and possibly the orders of their deaths, it's based on and tries to be compliant with Death to the Mechanisms, now with a NON-canon compliant epilogue, the final deaths of the Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26585383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NammiKisulora/pseuds/NammiKisulora
Summary: After being a general menace to the Universe for millennia, the Mechanisms begin to die, one by one. Some of them are found by the others, some are not.
Relationships: The Mechanisms Ensemble & The Mechanisms Ensemble
Series: Beginnings and Endings [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2084511
Comments: 12
Kudos: 54





	1. Jonny

**Author's Note:**

> When I get a lot of feelings about a thing, I fic. And I got A LOT of feelings over Death to the Mechanisms.

Nastya’s departure leaves the crew in disarray. The Mechanisms don’t _leave_. They might wander off and sometimes be separated for a century at the time, but they come back. Always.

Except Nastya doesn’t. Jonny is the only one who saw her leave, but the crew believes him when he tells them she’s not coming back. It’s something in his eyes: instead of the usual cruel, manic glee, they’re flat and – not sad, because Jonny doesn’t do _sad_ , but something close to it.

They all miss her, in their own way, even the Toy Soldier, but Jonny’s the worst, not helped in the least that he would rather... well, not die, obviously, but maybe spend eternity without shooting anyone ever again, than admitting it. He doesn’t _miss_ people either, any more than he’s sad.

After he delays their landing for more than a year by shooting the Aurora’s controls in a fit of rage, Ashes and Marius convince Raphaella to drug him and tie him up for a bit of forcible grief counselling. It does not end well, and when they finally land, the crew scatters for a while to regain their bearings.

*

It’s hard to say how much time passes before it happens. Millennia, certainly, but how many? None of them know. They are getting… tired, all of them. Things happen, people die, planets burn and ships explode and they still sing of what they see, but their hearts aren’t in it any more, not really. Neither in the violence or the music. They cruise through the stars, looking for something new without finding it, snappish and irritable and _tired_.

“What’s the point of shooting someone who can’t actually die?” Ashes shouts at Jonny as they help Tim back on his feet, but Jonny only holsters his gun and storms off, slamming the door behind him.

A month later, Jonny declares he wants a drink or eighty-five. _Alone_. Luckily they’re flying close to an asteroid cluster with a few settlements, so Brian agrees to coming back to pick him up in a few days, after he’s blown off some steam.

The first night is… well, good, he supposes. He gets stinking drunk and gets into a few fights, but it’s all dull, _pointless_. The second night starts out seeming a lot like the first, and for a moment or two, Jonny contemplates just leaving. He doesn’t, though. Instead he downs a bottle of whiskey in one go and wishes it would burn more.

In the end, he isn’t even the one to start the fight; someone else does that for him. He joins it on reflex, his weapon of choice tonight a broken bottle. He carves through the locals without thinking, and he doesn’t even see the kid whose knife suddenly goes right into his heart, jamming the gears. He answers with a swipe of broken glass before reaching for the knife and realises that something is… different. His fingers are growing numb and as he drops to his knees, he starts to laugh, a fierce, sharp-edged joy bubbling up along with a spray of blood, because he knows somehow, that this – this is the end.

The metal lump in his chest beats its piston against the blade of the knife a final time before finally stopping, and Jonny dies, laughing.

*

Ashes is the one who draws the short straw when they decide who’s going to be the one to drag Jonny back to the ship when he doesn’t show up voluntarily. They sigh and think about protesting (isn’t it Tim’s turn?), but in the end, they go.

Jonny isn’t anywhere obvious, and after several hours of looking, Ashes goes back to the bar to have a drink before asking for reinforcements in the search. They order a beer and start chatting idly with the bartender. The beer is sour and shitty, and they’re about to leave when the bartender says something that catches their attention. A fight a few days ago, and a man who died, laughing like a madman. His description of the man sounds a lot like Jonny, so they ask the logical follow-up question:

“So where did he go afterwards?”

The bartender looks confused.

“What d’ya mean, go afterwards? We hauled ‘im off to the morgue, o’ course.”

Ashes frowns.

“So he didn’t… get up again?”

“Nah, he died, I told ya.”

The Mechanisms don’t worry about each other; why would they? They’ve all seen each other killed and revived so many times; _killed_ each other countless times. Therefore it takes Ashes a while to identify the gnawing feeling in their chest as worry. Worry that the man in the morgue – no. They’ll go and take a look, then fetch Tim or Marius and go find Jonny wherever he’s passed out drunk on this backwater piece of space junk.

The morgue is cold and dirty, and a bored looking woman in a dirty white coat leads Ashes through to where the man who can’t be Jonny is kept.

“C’mon, it’s time to go”, they say to the corpse, who doesn’t respond. He’s still wearing his clothes and belts, but the gun is missing. His shirt is ripped and blood soaked, but what makes Ashes’ breath hitch is how peaceful he looks. Jonny was never peaceful, not even when he slept. (There was, of course, that time when he’d eaten a shipload of some strange lunar mushroom, and he spent three days staring out of the observation deck while drooling a lot and occasionally hugging passing crewmembers, but then the comedown hit him with a murderous frenzy that balanced it out enough for it not to count.)

They carry the body back to the ship, still expecting him to gasp and swear at them for being manhandled this way, but he doesn’t.

The other Mechanisms are playing boardgames on the bridge when Ashes come back. They lay Jonny down in the middle of the floor, unsure of what to say.

“Had a few too many even for you, eh?” Tim says, prodding Jonny with his toe.

“He’s dead”, Ashes says softly, and suddenly they’re all gathered around the body. “Like, _dead_ dead, I think.”

“But he’ll…”

“Won’t he?”

“What Utter Tosh! Wake Up, Jonny!” The tea the Toy Soldier offers trickles down Jonny’s chin, but there is still no sign of life.

“There always was a 0.000004 % chance of this happening, any time one of us died”, Ivy whispers, while Marius taps Jonny’s heart with a metal finger, listening for a tick that doesn’t come.

*

Raphaella examines the body and its unbeating mechanical heart while Brian sets a new course for the Aurora. Ashes leaves for a while, and Ivy, Tim and the Toy Soldier watch from the bridge as the bar where Jonny died goes up in flames. Then Ashes comes back and they leave.

After four days, four strange, quiet days, they’re at last in close orbit of the closest star, and the crew gathers to say goodbye. They have no idea how to; Nastya just left and other that that, none of them has ever… gone. (Except Doc Carmilla, of course, but none of them were sad to see her go.)

“You were an insufferable bastard, Jonny, but I’ll miss you”, Tim finally says, and the rest of them nod quietly, still half expecting Jonny to wake up and ask why they’re all looking so fucking sad, did somebody die or something?

He doesn’t, and they silently push his body out through the airlock.

“Rest in peace”, Brian mumbles. The rest of them are silent.


	2. Ashes & Raphaella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Shit_. Ashes _knew_ getting wasted in a science lab was a bad idea, which is only confirmed when they wake up floating in space, and the stars begin going out around them.
> 
> Raphaella on the other hand, plans her own final experiment.

It’s quiet, afterwards. Jonny always was the loudest of them, and his presence somehow lingered even when he was away, but now it’s… quiet. Their steps seem to echo louder than before, and sometimes, when any of the remaining crew lies awake in bed and listens carefully, they can hear that even something in the Aurora’s quiet song has changed.

Still they do what they’ve always done: they fight and sing and roam the stars in search of new adventures, but these days they rarely find one that doesn’t feel like something they have seen before. They are all waiting for something, but none of them know what. (Except maybe they do, don’t they? But they don’t have the words for it, and even if they did, they wouldn’t use them.)

*

Ashes is the next one to go. They just disappear one day, and the rest of the crew never find out what happened to them. Somehow they sense they aren’t coming back, though.

What happens is that Ashes gets drunk in the wrong place at the wrong time, and when they take a swing at the idiot who won’t shut up about how their great invention will change the universe something… goes wrong. There’s a bang and a flash of purple light, and Ashes must’ve passed out for a while, because when they come to everything is – gone.

 _S_ _hit. I knew getting wasted in a science lab was a bad idea_ , they think as they look around for… something. Anything. Preferably the Aurora, because it’s bloody cold here, but anything that could get them back to the ship would suffice. But there is simply nothing.

Or… wait. Far, far away, they see a few pinpricks of light – stars, they think, but too far away to reach any planets circling them without a vessel of some kind. _Aw, fuck._ Ashes does not relish the thought of having to spend centuries floating in space, dying and waking over and over again until the rest of the crew eventually turns up.

As they watch, considering the situation, one of the distant stars flickers and goes dark. Then another one, and another. Ashes blinks. _Shit._ Stars aren’t meant to behave that way, surely? They wish Raphaella was here, maybe she’d have an explanation for what’s going on. A few more stars go out, one by one, and realisation begins to dawn on Ashes. That this is the end. _Not just my end, but… The End. Well, fuck,_ they think with a grimace.

When the last star winks out, they pull a cigar out of their pocket and light it, taking a long, slow drag on it before unscrewing the flask of gasoline they’re carrying. They take a final look around but see nothing but pitch black space around them… and drop the match into the flask, just as it sears their fingertips for one last time.

A flash of light, a gasp… and then there is only darkness.

*

The remaining Mechanisms look for Ashes for a while, but without any particular ardour. Either they’ll end up in the same place eventually, they way the Mechanisms usually find their wayward crewmembers, or… or they won’t.

Raphaella grumbles about the very important piece of research equipment Ashes was supposed to be retrieving for her, but she spends more and more time just… sitting in her lab, instead of badgering Marius, Ivy or Tim into playing guinea pigs for her experiments, or studying interesting specimens retrieved from the planets they visit. Sometimes, she finds herself pressed to the window of the observation deck for days at a time, staring out into the darkness, wondering. Then she shakes herself and goes back into the lab for yet another meaningless experiment that won’t lead to any new, satisfying discoveries.

Marius tries to talk to her about it, but she shrugs him off. He sighs and goes back to attempting to psychoanalyse the large selection of cigars, collected from all over the universe, that Ashes left behind – presumably with somewhat greater success.

Years go by, decades pass, and the Mechanisms travel through the stars like they have always done. Tim begins to frown instead of smiling after a stint at the guns, but when asked he only shrugs. And Raphaella stares longingly into the void, thinking, wondering… One day, she decides that it is time. Time to finally do the one thing she has dreamed of for millennia but never dared, the one thing she suspected she wouldn’t come back from. Doing it before would’ve meant missing out on other research and experiments, and the suspicion that she would never be able to record or analyse the experiment itself was enough to put her off the thought. But now… now it is the only thing that still wakes the old, familiar thrill of discovery, of something truly _new_.

“Brian? Could you manoeuvre us into as close orbit as is safe of the nearest black hole?”

“Of course, Raphaella. Do you finally have a new experiment in mind?”

And Raphaella smiles, for what feels like the first time in years.

“Yeah. I think I do.”

She thinks long and hard of what to take with her. She can’t go in empty handed, that would be an immense waste of scientific potential _if_ she actually succeeds in learning anything in there. But what? Finally she settles on a few smaller pieces of research equipment that can be easily strapped onto her body, and as an afterthought, she screws loose a ventilation grid in the lab. She ties it to her belt and pats it a few times. It’s enough to not feel entirely alone, and a suitable anchor back to the ship if there is any chance whatsoever she can bring anything back to process in a proper lab environment.

“One last adventure, then”, she says and goes to say her goodbyes.

*

The rest of them looked dubious as she told them of her plan, because a science field trip into a black hole is a bit much even for the other Mechanisms. She can’t blame them, but as the twists the wheel to open the airlock she is thankful they didn’t try to stop her, neither with words nor force. _Jonny probably would’ve_ , she thinks with a wry smile, _back when he and Ashes were still alive none of them would’ve let me do this.  
_

She steps out and flexes her wings, feeling the chill of space around her, and the pull of the black hole tugging at her. She gives the Aurora’s hull a final pat before setting off, first flying, then letting the gravity pull her in.


	3. Tim & Ivy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim goes on his final rampage while Ivy tries to retire, until her chosen library planet does what libraries are prone to do: burn.

“In light of recent events and after carefully assessing my options, I have decided to retire. At this point there is a 74 % chance of it actually working, and I.” Ivy falters, her carefully rehearsed speech suddenly seeming inadequate as the puzzled expression Marius’ faces change into pained incomprehension and Tim abruptly drops the octokitten he has been forcibly cuddling, Brian lowers his head and the Toy Soldier starts making a cup of tea with agitated motions. Ivy takes a breath. “I want to spend the remainder of my life with the books. I have picked out a suitable library planet close by; I will give you the coordinates in a moment, Brian.”

“But…” Tim says, “… we don’t retire. We _can’t_ retire.”

“If we can die, we can retire”, Ivy says, nodding reassuringly. She cocks her head and squints at him. “Not you, though. The chance of you ever retiring to a life without explosions is less than 0,01 %, and would require some extraordinary external force.” Tim gives her a feeble grin before wrapping her in a hug, that Marius and Brian joins after a moment. The Toy Soldier salutes her stiffly, its wooden upper lip the stiffest the universe has ever seen. When they release her, waves in the direction of the airlock. “I will program the shuttle to return automatically after a few hours, as soon as I’ve unloaded the books.”

“Wait, you’re taking our library?” Tim frowns.

“It’s my library, Tim. When did you last read a book?”

“… sometimes I read to the octokittens?”

“I know. Don’t worry, I left the ones with the most teeth marks on in your room.”

“Oh.”

*

After Ivy leaves, the four of them that’s left go looking for a good war to distract themselves from – themselves, really. The Aurora is so quiet these days, the ship far too large for only four crewmembers. Raphaella’s lab sits untouched as she left it, as does Ashes’ rooms and Jonny’s overly-lavish-but-rarely-slept-in quarters.

Tim is restless and grumpy, but refuses all attempts to talk about it. The guns that have always been like extensions of himself, his aim sure and steady, are suddenly uncooperative and clumsy pieces of metal, the bullets going nanometres askew. No one but Tim notices, of course, but he can feel every bullet gone astray in his bones. He continues to shoot, because what else would he do, but the ensuing explosions have begun to feel dull, their bright flashes no longer sending thrills of joy through his body and only pain through his eyes.

When he tells the others where he wants to go next, Marius’ eyes light up and he asks if he can come with. Tim considers it for a moment before shaking his head.

“No. I want to do this alone. I think these guns are a bit big for you to handle”, he says with a tired wink. Predictably enough, this launches Marius into a rambling tirade about overcompensating for an inferiority complex that Tim has murdered him several times to prove he doesn’t have. He doesn’t bother this time, just pets the nearest octokittens goodbye before climbing into the shuttle.

The gunships of the remote planet are beautiful, exquisite in their enormity with firepower almost beyond mortal imagination. But Tim isn’t mortal, and for the first time in centuries exhilaration bubbles through his veins as he examines the controls. When he opens fire, the thunder thunder of the ship’s guns is deafening and the explosions can be seen from all over the system. Tim loves every second of it.

The space station is located in the periphery of the shipbuilding planet’s system, and obliterating it seems like a good way to say goodbye to it. Tim doesn’t realise that he misjudged the distance until the alarms go off, the ship’s warning systems screeching at the impending crash and –

The huge gunship collides nose first with the space station, and Tim has time to think _Oh fu-_ before the impact throws him out of the pilot’s seat, its belt flailing uselessly and unbuckled in the sudden rush of wind coming in through the shattered windscreen. The glass cuts him as he crashes through it, falling through the broken ceiling of the station before the landing shatters every bone in his body.

It only hurts for a moment before the space station explodes.

*

The last of the Mechanisms watch the crash from a distance, waiting for Tim to re-emerge from the wreckage. Instead they see the space station transform into a ball of flame, and after a few days it seems clear that Tim isn’t coming back.

“It’s how he wanted it”, Brian mutters before turning away.

“It Was A Good Explosion!” The Toy Soldier nods sagely. “It Was Not Quite As Big, But It Reminded Me Of The One That Blew Up His Moon.”

Marius just sighs and goes to comfort the octokittens.

*

Whatever the Mechanisms might be, they do usually keep sincerely given promises to each other. So after Ivy made them swear to leave her alone on her library, they stay away. Marius convinces Brian to send her a short message to inform her of Tim’s death, but they receive no reply. So they go back to keeping loose tabs on her chosen home whenever they pass by – something they are sure she knows, since the planet’s computers definitely registers something as large as the Aurora orbiting it for a day or two every few decades.

Therefore they notice when the system the library planet belongs to gets entangled in a war Marius swears is based on several misunderstandings caused by their ruler’s loss of four consecutive childhood pets. Brian finds this explanation less likely than some good old desire to conquer and expand, but doesn’t argue the point. On the whole, they spend less and less time together, despite the Toy Soldier’s valiant attempts to throw rousing tea parties and instigate games of fun and violence. They barely even sing together any more; the old songs the crew used to perform carry too many memories of comrades lost, and every new one they try to write feels stale and dry without the rest of them. And so they travel aimlessly, until Ivy’s planet catches fire.

While the little library planet itself wasn’t a primary target, it got caught in the crossfire as libraries are wont to do. It’s the Aurora that alerts them when her link to the planet’s computer system abruptly cuts out. Marius expects Brian to argue that they should respect her privacy and leave her to her own devices, but when he brings up the idea to offer her a place back on the Aurora (at least until she can find another library to while away her life in) Brian simply nods.

“I’ve already laid in the coordinates, we’re on our way”, he says, tapping a button. A map of their route appears, and Marius is surprised that they are only two days away. The Aurora hums around them, picking up more speed.

In the end, two days still proves to be too far.

*

Ivy scrambles desperately to cram as many books and scrolls as she can into the escape pod before the flames claim them all. The fires have been spreading for three days, six hours and fifty four minutes now, and the chances to extinguish more than small patches of them dropped to zero two days, three hours and six minutes ago. All that remains to do is try to save as many of the books as possible, and she wills herself not to acknowledge exactly how few that is. _0.09 %_ _of the planet’s collection_ , her traitorous mechanical brain supplies and Ivy swears before breaking into a run, pushing the heavy book-laden cart in front of her.

The escape pod is full to bursting now, and the fire is closing in from every direction. She shoves the last of the books into the pod and does a quick calculation how much space is left inside it. _3000in_ _3_ , her brain supplies, _evenly spaced in the gaps between books_. Far too little space for even a newborn octokitten, much less for her.

“Shit.” She chokes, coughing, the smoke is getting thicker and she _has to save the books_. She can’t breathe and the heat is unbearable and there is no way she can climb inside. The smoke is blinding her, but she still finds the external launch button beside the escape pod’s door. After giving the door a final shove to make sure it’s securely locked, she slams it with all her strength. The force of the pod shooting off into space knocks her over, and she lies there as the smoke fills her lungs and the gears of her brain slowly grind to a halt for one last time.

*

It is the Toy Soldier who spots the escape pod. Since it doesn’t need sleep, it has posted itself on watch duty and has kept a stiff vigil at the bridge’s observation window. They are still far too far away to see the library planet as anything other than a distant speck of fiery light, but the lone escape pod drifting past them catches the Soldier’s attention.

“Brian, I Would Like To Inform You That An Unexpected Object Has Been Spotted”, it says, handing over a cup of tea. “Do We Believe It To Contain Our Ivy?”

“… what’s all the fuss about?” Marius staggers over to them, yawning. Then he sees the pod and immediately snaps fully awake. “Oh!”

Getting it to dock to the Aurora without any response from within it takes more time than they would like, and they pointedly ignore the Aurora’s refusal to confirm or deny any signs of life from it. For half an hour, they allow themselves to hope.

That hope shatters when they finally get the escape pod’s door open, and only lifeless books and ancient scrolls tumble out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this turned out unexpectedly long! Hopefully it won't be two months until the next chapter and the epilogue.


	4. Marius, Brian & the Toy Soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marius has his fateful encounter with the ocotkittens, Brian says goodbye, and only the Toy Soldier is left on the Aurora.

They donate the books to another library planet, along with some of the gold still lying around gathering dust in Ashes’ rooms. The Toy Soldier, who is the only one of them to stick around until the special collection is ready and displayed, says there is a very nice brass plaque commemorating their late archivist and that maybe they should all go and take a look, Make A Nice Picnic Of It?

They don’t. Instead they take to the stars again, cruising aimlessly between randomly picked fights and stale adventures that rarely spark a single song.

Then, one day, Marius remembers the octokittens. They haven’t been around much since Tim, preferring to hide away down in the storage areas where they rarely have any business. Not that he’s thought much about them, but suddenly he really wants to know how the little many-legged horde is doing.

They’re not in the empty, abandoned library, nor in Raphaella’s dusty lab. Only a single one slithers past him when he looks into Tim’s room, but he follows it. Maybe it’ll lead him back to the rest of them? It slithers down towards the engineering deck, a part of the ship none of them have visited for centuries. Brian has done a little bit of routine maintenance work here and there, but with everyone who was really into tinkering with the ship gone, those parts just fell into disuse. It was easier to pretend not to remember how huge their starship is; it feels empty enough as it is.

The octokitten chirps and squeezes itself through an impossible small crack under the door. _Hah!_ Marius throws the door open and for a single moment, he sees a veritable sea of octokittens, covering the floor and the walls of the engineering deck. They chitter and mewl excitedly, and Marius grins. _They are pretty cute after all_ , he thinks. Then they descend upon him all at once, their hungry yowling rising to an ear-splitting crescendo that drowns out Marius single shout of surprise and pain entirely.

It’s over in 11.7 seconds, and when Brian and the Toy Soldier comes running, drawn by the commotion, the octokittens have already retreated back into the depths of the engineering deck. All that’s left are a few spatters of blood, a metal arm, its fingers still twitching, and a half-shattered stopwatch, the final recorded numbers blinking on the screen for a second before going dark.

“We Really Ought To Have Remembered To Feed The Octokittens”, the Toy Soldier says, its usual chipper tone turned dull. It gathers up the metal arm and cradles it to its chest, the fingers tapping against the wood. Brian reaches out and holds them still, his heart beating like it’s trying to escape its metal casing.

*

The Toy Soldier rarely sings any more, even its stiff upper lip wavering these days. Brian still plays his instruments, but there is no joy in it: every plucked string and beat of the drum ringing eerily through the empty, silent ship, no soundproofing enough to stop the echoes.

Then one day, when he’s sitting at his drums, beating out the lonlely rhythms to his favourite songs from when the crew was whole… he misses a beat, for the first time in his long, long life. Quietly, he puts the drumsticks down and covers the drum set with a dust sheet, because he knows he won’t use it again. With a final, mournful glance behind him, he closes the door to their music room for the last time.

He walks through the ship slowly, savouring the memories saturating the very walls of it. Music, shouting, laughter, fighting… Wanton violence and quiet, gentle moments when all that seemed to exist in the universe were themselves and the stars. Voices, instruments, now silent forever.

He touches a scorch mark on the wall, one of the last mementoes of Ashes’ fiery escapades that none of them got around to fixing. _What happened to them?_ he wonders, remembering the confusion among the remaining crew when Ashes disappeared, as well as their growing dread as they realised that they probably wouldn’t come back. He hopes they got an ending worthy of them, all fire and defiance, just the way they lived.

A belt is slung over the corner of a shelf in the common room. It looks treacherously haphazard, but Brian knows it’s hung there for centuries, always meticulously replaced if it would fall off. He can’t remember when Jonny tossed it there, but it can’t have been long before his death. Ashes had said he laughed as he died, with blood in his mouth and a knife in his heart, he _laughed_ , and that _fits_.

Ivy, Marius, Raphaella, Tim… all of them have made their mark on the ship. The books Ivy left, with their scribbled notations and exclamation marks – not that _she_ needed the notes when she had it all stored in her brain, but whenever she wanted to share the information she soon discovered it was better to do it this way. Brian smiles, putting the book back on its shelf. He hopes someone will see that plaque in the museum and go digging through the archives to learn of her, and them.

He keeps walking, stopping for a moment in the medbay, thinking about Marius with all his medical equipment that he never learnt how to use properly, always refusing Brian to actually teach him anything he liked. After the octokittens had their fill, neither Brian or the Toy Soldier quite knew what to do with the metal arm they had left, so they carefully tucked it into a spare violin case they found under the medbay cot. It had felt like a funeral of sorts, when they shut the door, knowing neither of them ever needed anything from there. With a sigh, he leaves the door unopened.

Similarly, he stays out of Raphaella’s lab. Even after all this time, it’s probably not safe to actually go inside, and right now is not the time to risk it, whereas it was almost always worth it – before. Before their crew began to end, to crumble, disappear into the darkest darkness… He never did find out where she came from, he muses, but it’s far too late to regret not asking more about it now.

Half a plasma gun is propping up the kitchen door, just like it has for… Brian has no idea. Tim kept leaving bits of disassembled weaponry in the most unlikely places, but the universe have mercy one anyone who touched them! When he to go steal the largest gunship ever built and never come back, it seemed wrong to break the habit. Brian pauses for a moment, contemplating the gun, and the restless, irritable days the spent circling the wreckage of the space station. All of them had known what it meant, the moment they saw the ship crash, but still there had been a tiny sliver of hope that Tim would come back to them, just like they had wanted to save Ivy.

With a sigh he turns away, heading down this time, down into the depth of the Aurora, down into the engine room. And there, at last, he thinks of Nastya, _lost in the cosmos lonely_ , just like in the song she wrote for him. He wonders if she’s dead, if she died like she must have wanted, or if she’s still out there somewhere, drifting through the endless void. He wonders if he’ll find her there.

The Toy Soldier is waiting for him by the airlock. How it knew where to find him, he has no idea, but he’s grateful that he doesn’t need to go looking for it. All at once, the weight of the millennia are pressing down on him, so heavy that he thinks he might crumble if nothing can release the pressure soon. Fortunately, he thinks he knows how to; after all he’s done it before, only that this time it will be his own choice, and forever. He puts his hand on the Toy Soldier’s shoulder and squeezes, metal against wood.

“Goodbye, TS”, is all he says. There are no more words in him, not now. The Toy Soldier salutes him smartly, clicking its heels together.

“It’s Been An Honour Serving With You, Sir Drumbot.” Then it steps back to let Brian access the airlock. He only looks back once, and the Toy Soldier raises its hand to him. He nods to it, then he steps out.

The nothingness of space is icy cold around him, and he drifts into it with open arms. Finally, he has come home.

*

For a while, the Toy Soldier remains by the airlock, standing absolutely still. The ship is finally empty, entirely devoid of humanoid life, itself and the octokittens all that remain. It has never processed time in the same way humans do, nor emotions, but the empty feeling in its clockwork chest speaks its own clear language.

For millennia, its purpose was to Pretend to be a Mechanism: to play and sing and laugh and fight and kill with its friends. Now, when all its friends are gone so is its purpose.

Slowly it makes its way to the bridge to take in the view of distant stars through the large window there. It would be breathtaking, it is sure of it, if it only had a breath. Instead, it gives the wall a few reassuring pats.

“Thank You For Being Our Faithful Vessel For So Long”, it says. “It Has Been A Pleasure Knowing You.”

Then it simply… stops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that was it, canon-wise. However, there is an epilogue to come where we meet someone who has been gone for a long, long time already.


	5. Epilogue: Nastya & the Aurora

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nastya returns for the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand here we went off the canon rails entirely! I could not resist this idea, I'm sorry.

The airlock creaks open, and a slight figure in a bulky coat steps through. The Aurora’s hum changes.

 **I know you** , it murmurs through its engines. **I know you, but I can’t remember who you are.**

The figure leans against the wall, resting its cheek against the metal.

“It’s me, Aurora. Nastya. Your Nastya.” But Aurora only hums in confusion, and Nastya caresses the metal for a moment before she straightens up and starts walking, her steps echoing in the silence. “Jonny?” she calls out. “Ashes? Brian, Tim?” No answer. “Ivy? Raphaella? Marius? TS?”

Something is wrong, she can feel it. The Aurora was never this quiet before. Where have they all gone? It’s been so long, but somehow the thought that they wouldn’t be here when she came back never even struck her.

“Jonny? I – I’ve brought you something, from New Texas. I found it, you know, I knew you were lying about having made it up.” But Jonny doesn’t answer, because he isn’t here. No one is, only Aurora herself, but she is even less the Aurora Nastya loved than when she left.

She searches the ship slowly, combing through every familiar nook of it and a fair few she doesn’t recognise, but all she finds is dust and emptiness. Even the octokittens appear to have deserted the ship, and Nastya wonders why she felt the call back now. Countless years have passed since she left, and the tug back to Aurora and her crew was never more than a faint blip, deep inside her; not until now, when there is nothing left to return to.

She saves the bridge for last, and there she finds the first and only sign of the other Mechanisms: a crumpled form leaning against the wall, covered in dust and ancient cobwebs. Nastya kneels next to it, brushing away the detritus of time from the painted wooden face.

“TS?” But the Toy Soldier is only wood now, its strange life spark gone and its human voice forever silent. Nastya sighs and gets back on her feet, resting a hand on a grille in the wall. “Where did they go, Aurora?” she asks, and she feels as much as hears the almost-familiar voice answer:

**Away, gone, dead. Their time came and went and they went with it.**

“So they could die after all”, Nastya murmurs as she sits down in the pilot’s seat. She rarely sat there when she flew with the rest of the crew; it was Brian’s place, and she preferred the engine room or the vents anyway, because that’s where she always felt closest to Aurora. “Is it our time now, Aurora? Is that why you called me back?”

 **Yes.** **I think it is.** Aurora’s hum quiets for a moment, a momentary, pensive pause. **Nastya. I remember that name. Nastya. You loved me, didn’t you? And I loved you.**

“Yes.” She caresses the controls in front of her, and Aurora _purrs_. Her voice is different, and she only seems to remember faint traces of what they shared, but some things are apparently the same as ever. Nastya twirls a finger around a few of the buttons and can’t hold back a smirk as the chair vibrates for a moment. Then she clicks a few keys to access the logs and a map of all nearby systems to plot out their course, while Aurora sings a contented song of companionship to her. It’s both comforting and sad, Nastya thinks as she considers their options. Aurora tells her of how lonely she’s been since Brian and the Toy Soldier disappeared, and of how good it feels not to be alone, but… but Nastya knows that any company would have got the same reaction, and she can’t deny that it hurts, even after all this time. She misses _her_ Aurora, but she has already been gone for millennia.

The logs are… incomplete in their information of what happened to the crew, with only uncertain notes on most of them, except Jonny, whose fate is recorded in Raphaella’s succinct style. Some of the others only have a note declaring them missing, with an addition of their last known circumstances. The only thing that is completely clear is that they are gone forever, and Nastya won’t know how or when – but in a way that is only fitting, considering how she once left them.

For centuries she drifted through the cold and darkness, dying and waking over and over, every new, short life its own endless agony. And then… then she was found, picked up by a small starship crewed by mortals, and she resigned herself to live again. To live, and live, and live, and live, still roaming the stars and distant planets, never stopping long in one place. The only difference was really that now, she did it all alone.

And now she is here again, at last, at the end, on this ship both so familiar and strange. And still she is alone.

She finishes laying in the new coordinates and gets out of the pilot’s seat. That isn’t where she wants to spend their final days.

*

The engine room is as warm as ever, and Nastya finally sheds her heavy coat before sitting down on the floor, close to the wall. She rests her cheek against the wall and feels Aurora’s hum change into something more musical. It takes a moment before she realises it’s a song she recognises, and begins to hum along as she caresses a nearby cable snaking down the wall.

“We used to sing together all the time”, she says, her throat closing up. She swallows and blinks to fight off the tears that pool in her eyes. “I’d do repairs and improvements on you, and we’d sing together as I worked. It was the happiest I’ve ever been.”

All around her, Aurora sings, sings so sweetly that Nastya can’t keep from crying anymore, sings of the crew, sings of loss, sings of _her_.

 **I know you** , she sings as Nastya wraps the cable around her arm, **I remember you, Nastya, Nastya, Nastya, my love.** Nastya clings to the cable and presses her forehead against the wall, all Aurora’s vibrations travelling through her, and listens to the song until she falls asleep there, finally back where she belongs.

*

When she wakes, she crawls into the vents closest to the engine. The heat is scorching and the fumes make it hard to breathe, but it doesn’t matter, not anymore; not that it ever did.

“I haven’t been warm since I left you”, she whispers into the dark, tracing the metal’s pattern with her fingers. So strange, and so familiar at once. “I could never be warm out there. Now I’ll never be cold again.”

It takes them three days to reach the star she set the course for. Three long, long days she spends there, curled in the vent, talking, talking, talking, sometimes singing softly with Aurora, sometimes sharing the silence. When the heat finally begin to rise rapidly, she kisses the wall closest to her a single time.

Then she closes her eyes and waits.

**Author's Note:**

> And that was it, my first completed multi-chapter fic in nine years.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments mean more to me than I can say <3


End file.
